Fleeting Winter Sun
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: Azel and Arthur, one day in exile. Giftfic for Dameceles/DamoselCastel.


**Fleeting Winter Sun**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Giftfic for Dameceles/DamoselCastel. Azel in exile. Rated for angst and language.

* * *

"Stand back, Arthur! Don't move," Azel called out as the pot reached a rolling boil.

Arthur was so bundled against the cold that he could hardly move as it was, but Azel didn't put anything past the little rascal. Arthur was good, though- only his big violet eyes moved as Azel lifted the pot of boiling water and flung its contents downwind.

The water was supposed to come back down as a fall of white snow, the way it had for Lewyn when the "bard" performed tricks to liven the dullness of exile in Sailane. Instead it just came down as hot water that left a scar across the snow, no more interesting than the trail left by a stream of piss. Azel stared at the failure of this perfectly simple trick.

"I don't even know what I did wrong. The water can't have been too hot. How do you get more hot than boiling?"

The noises Arthur made from under his knotted scarf weren't very impressed. Azel left the empty pot at their doorstep to collect snow, hoisted Arthur and began to trudge the half-mile into town.

"We'll have Mama make you ice cream when we get back. How's that sound?" Azel said as Arthur burrowed into the warmth of Azel's coat. As they walked, Azel thought to himself that he'd gotten so used to the blanket of snow across Silesse that he didn't really find it strange or even beautiful anymore. The snow was just there, the way Verdane had trees and Agustria had green grass in the winter and brown in the summer.

-x-

The coffeehouse in town looked like it did every Tuesday, with the same now-familiar faces: Anneli the bright-eyed coffee girl, Grete the hollow-cheeked war widow, Dagny the plump older lady who'd never had children and Jorunn the thin older lady who'd borne seven. All of them smiled upon seeing Arthur, and Azel was happy to leave him to Jorunn's experienced hands for a few hours. It relieved him that the women of this nameless village had taken Arthur into their hearts even though this fair-haired child was so plainly not _of _them, and Azel stood watching the scene for a moment before slipping out the doorway.

Though their names were strange on his tongue, Azel did have to admit that Jorunn and Dagny and the rest _felt_ like people he'd encountered before, somehow. With their dark and hair eyes they could have been peasants of Grannvale, or of Agustria, or even Verdane; they looked very little at all like the green-eyed and willowy nobles and high-ranking officers of Silesse, and it did make Azel wonder how the Way Things Always Were in Jugdral had come to be in the first place. Quan had talked a lot about how the people of Leonster and of Thracia had once been as one family and should be again, but maybe they'd _all_ been family at some time so far back that no one now remembered it.

Azel pondered things like this when he made his trip to the village on Saturdays because it was better than pondering other things in his life. The Saturday crowd of old men- old, because all the young men of their village were dead- was already there in the hot room when Azel arrived. They acknowledged him with a nod and a few words as he took a seat on the cedar bench, and then they all lapsed back into the sacrosanct quiet of the sauna.

In the sauna there were no titles, not even for King Lewyn should he step in the door. In the sauna, no one discussed the war or the murder of Queen Rahna, and so the sauna had become Azel's safe space, the place where his problems were not allowed to exist. He was not Lord Azel of the noble house of Velthomer and never had been. He was not a refugee, a traitor under probable sentence of death should he ever set foot in his homeland. He could close his eyes and sweat and in that moment he was nobody of any particular importance beneath the fleeting winter sun.

Even so, the Vala blood in his veins told him otherwise. He was always strangely comfortable, almost like the sauna was his natural element, and he stayed comfortable even when the other men decided it was time for a roll in the snow. Sometimes Azel wondered how high the heat of the fire would have to go before he really felt it, or if he would keep on enjoying the burn to the point where it killed him.

For Arthur's sake and Tiltyu's he couldn't afford to find out, so he went dashed out into the snow to cool off in a thick white bank. Snow was coming down again in large perfect flakes, and as Azel and the village men enjoyed their usual after-sauna meal of sausages and beer, the new snow covered up all the imperfections in the mounds and furrows of last week's snow.

"See, I said we'd have ice cream when we got home," said Azel once he'd collected Arthur, as at least the pot from his boiling-water trick should be filled now with pure fluffy snow, the perfect sort to make Arthur's favorite treat.

"Izekream," repeated Arthur with delight, though the ladies of the coffeehouse had probably slipped him plenty of treats that day.

Azel tried to hold peace of the sauna with him as he walked back toward the cottage, but fear crept back slowly as he and Arthur made the journey through a world made beautiful again by the new snow. He'd managed to make the house Tiltyu's own refuge, so as not to crush her again, but some day she was going to find out about Queen Rahna, find out how horribly Lord Brother's invasion had succeeded, find out how only the sheer insignificance of this nameless village had kept them safe from Grannvale. And it was better to find out from him than from, say, finding soldiers at the door.

But he didn't have it in him, not today, and Azel stepped into the cottage with a full pot of snow in his hand and a smile on his face, as though making Arthur a bowl of ice cream must be the most important thing in the world.

**The End**


End file.
